Fantasy Battles: The 9th Age has arrived

Fantasy Battles: The 9th Age has arrived, ushering in a new chapter for Miniature Fantasy Wargaming

On the 30th of April, 2016 the official ruleset for Fantasy Battles: The 9th Age was unveiled. The forever-free Rule Book, Magic Compendium and 16 Army Books are now available on the-ninth-age.com. These books represent the cumulative efforts of over 250 volunteer staff members and the input and playtesting from more than 5,000 fans, who were eager to help pick up the pieces after the scene crashed in summer of 2015.

The project was launched in Q3 of 2015 by a team led by the creators of the widly-adopted Swe-comp tournament balancing rules. With their cumulative decades of competitive wargaming experience serving as the guiding hand, and a palpable desire within the fantasy wargaming community, experienced tournament players form all over the world quickly lent their support to help create what has become a comprehensive, balanced, re-imaging of Fantasy Wargaming for a new age, if you will. This community of stalwarts persevered through a lengthy design and balancing phase, producing thousands of games worth of play-testing data that was compiled and used to inform more than seven book iterations. The result is a well balanced tournament-ready system.

Already The 9th Age has established itself as the tournament standard for competitive fantasy wargaming. As a beta, the Ninth Age has been played at innumerable games and Grand Tournaments worldwide and will be the ruleset for the European Team Competition (ETC) in May. In less than a year The 9th Age has experienced staggering growth and support from all reaches of the globe, filling a void in the rank & filefantasy war gaming scene.

Now that T9A offers a stable version, the game is increasingly accessible to gaming groups who balked at the rapid pace of updates in the early development phases.

Complete army books include three human factions, three elven factions, two dwarven factions, two undead factions, three beast-like factions and three monster-like factions. There are already future plans for several supplemental armies based on community demand. As there are no official miniatures for the 9th Age any model you own that you feel adequately represents a unit is completely legal under these rules, and always will be. For the first time YOU the player decide what your units look like.

Recently, The 9th Age announced Shield Wolf Miniatures would provide miniature support going forward. This is only the first of several partnerships with miniatures producers to come for the 9th Age.

As part of the 1.0 release of Fantasy Battles: The 9th Age, this week will be all about reviews. To kick it off, blogger Raffazza did an in-depth, written review of the 1.00 Rulebook. I think some of you might be interested in his comparison to the WHFB 8th edition rules. Very handy!

A short time ago I was accosted by some burly gentlemen. This event was initially entirely missed by me, being after all a common occurrence in London. This led to a rather embarrassing exchange where it was made clear to me this was in fact an ominous event to be taken very seriously (they looked really awkward about it, bless them). The ensuing game of charades (turns out the minions of the Dark Conclave of the Faceless TM pending are *actually* faceless…) made things clear – I was to write about the newly released rules for The 9th Age – diversions into the festivities of discussing army books was actively discouraged (seriously, they have means). Being rather British about things, I stiffened that upper lip and went in search for a bull to grasp.

We received many requests for a structured guide to the rules differences between WFB 8th edition and Fantasy Battles: The 9th Age. Youtuber Oncebitten360 has made a video that takes us by the hand and does exactly that. Put your phone on mute, get the pretzels and soda out, lock your door and kick back: movie time!